:) Once again thanks to all for the advice. It is in moments like this during
the
construction of a kit plane that the support and encouragement from fellow
builders is so important. I will move forward as is.
To me, I deem smooth elevator control as a very important feature to achieving
good landings in an airplane. When I had my Mooney (another airplane with not
so great landing reputation [I'm building a mono]) the key to smooth landings
was smooth elevator control. I dissasembled the entire pushrod system in that
airplane (quite complex but neat) and rebuilt it to achieve smooth control and
great landings every time ensued.
It was an interesting learning experience to achieve this in the Europa. I
understood
the fuselage was flexible but I got down to a point where just adding one
cleco could result in noticing binding (very slight). Probably not that critical
but I was that picky. I ended up designing two small ribs. One behind the
aft bulkhead, about the height where the bearings are located and about 1.5"
wide and another at the bonding flange location between the aft bulkhead and
the sternpost. Plus reinforcing the forward stick used to set the aft bottom
fuselage
spread when installing the bearing. This stiffened the entire aft section
enough to prevent the bearings from twisting and binding when the top is clecoed
in place.
If I was doing this again, I would NOT follow the manual instructions again when
installing the torque tube. I would instead set the entire fuselage with clecos
(as recommended by the clamp mod instructions) and, at the last moment, if
would bond the bearings even if it was a difficult task. Bud Yearly also
provided
advice about using stronger sticks to hold the bottom fuselage shape back
there, which is what I tried to achieve with the ribs after the fact. I really
concur with that advice since any miniscule deformation affected the bearings
back there.
Anyway, many thanks to all and looking forward to my friends stop calling my
project
"The Canoe Build" :)
Best Regards,
Chris
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